Monthly Archives: January 2016

Can government be cut down in size? Over at NC Capitol Connection, our colleague Matt Caulder reports on one move in that direction: the privatization of the state motor pool. It's a familiar story. There was a perceived need for a supply of vehicles for emergencies. Over time, the size of the pool expanded. But […]

By Jenna Robinson For the fourth straight year, college enrollment is down. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show that this fall, enrollments at colleges and universities dropped for the eighth semester in a row, down 1.7 percent below what they were last fall. Jay Schalin suggests that this might be due to […]

Today, the United States Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a critical free speech case in which the Civitas Institute Center for Law and Freedom (CLF) joined an amicus brief last year. The case presents the question of whether a state employee can be forced to pay union dues to a public […]

Earlier this week Education Week released Quality Counts 2016. ( subscription required) The report gives overall grades and scores to states based on criteria such as chances for success, K-12 achievement and school finance. In 2016, the nation received an overall grade of C (74.4), the same letter grade as last year. North Carolina received […]

By Jenna A. Robinson That's what Wesleyan president Michael Roth suggests in his new book, which George Leef reviews here. Leef finds that the argument Roth lays out in defense of liberal education in Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, is unconvincing: The problem is that Roth, who seems to be “preaching to members of the church of the […]